Australian kids with cancer forced overseas for treatment as proton therapy centre sits empty in Adelaide
Instead, Adelaide 's state-of-the-art Australian Bragg Centre for Proton Therapy now sits pretty much empty, and is likely to remain so for many years to come.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Lack of cancer treatment forces Australian families to seek care abroad.
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It means hundreds of Australian families already navigating the hardest point in their lives after being told their kid has cancer will have to deal with endless paperwork for government grants or raise thousands of dollars themselves before packing up their lives and travelling to the United States for treatment.
Opposition health spokesperson Anne Ruston declared it an 'absolute national shame and an abject failure'.
She said many children and babies 'likely will die as a result of not being able to get access to the technology that was promised to them'.
The project was promised eight years ago by the federal Liberal and state government.
But last year the South Australian Labor government tore up the contract with the US company supplying the proton beam machine over funding issues.
An auditor general report into the decision has since found significant 'gaps' in the way the state government managed the project.
'Including the need for... effective oversight, project management and risk management arrangements, reflecting a project that is high risk, has a significant cost and has national consequences,' the report said.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas told 7NEWS: 'We can't fix the errors of the past, we just have to focus on a way we can get through this rather complex policy challenge.'
But with more than $100 million of public money already spent and no clear timeline for completion, the cost to taxpayers, and to Australian families, is mounting.
Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said 'we are trying to work out really how much of that money is going to be able to be recouped', if any.
'But it seems quite clear to me on the best advice I have from the department that there is going to be a significant taxpayer loss here,' he said.
He warned that it could still be years before Australia has a functioning proton therapy unit, and pointed the finger at earlier decisions made under the former Marshall Liberal government in South Australia and the Turnbull Liberal government federally for choosing a controversial company unable to deliver the machine.
Ruston rejected the attempt to shift blame, saying 'it is a sad indictment that you would have a health minister who is about to enter his second term who is still blaming previous governments for the failures that are occurring on his watch'.
While politicians argue, and bureaucrats continue to release reports, almost 1000 Australian families are trying to raise enough money to receive lifesaving treatment in America.
Five-year-old Lenna Housseini was recently knocked back by the federal government's Medical Overseas Treatment Program, which helps Australians with life-threatening medical conditions access treatment overseas when it is not available here.
Her parents would need to raise $500,000 privately for her to go.
Without the time to do so, she will undergo treatment for Malignant Rhabdoid Tumour in Australia.
While the X-ray radiation here could save her life, there is only a 40 per cent chance she will survive and if she does pull through, she may struggle to speak.
'It's too late to complain, it's too late to do anything, it's too late to even have the regret, because we don't have time to have regret, we have to stay positive,' her father Amin Housseini said earlier this week.
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Herald Sun
3 hours ago
- Herald Sun
Steve Price: Brad Battin needs to show some Jeff Kennett showmanship
Filling in on 3AW back in the early 1990s I upset Premier Jeff Kennett so badly he stormed into my office and demanded an apology. My crime was replacing Kennett, on air, with Opposition Leader John Brumby. Jeffrey was on holiday but guarded his regular weekday half-hour spot on the Neil Mitchell show like it was one of his children. The Premier was a lot more volatile back then, during his eight-year reign in the top job, and to say we almost came to blows is not an exaggeration. The pair of us have laughed about it subsequently. He was also, prior to defeating Labor's Joan Kirner in 1992 as Victoria wore the 'rust-bucket state' tag, an exceptional Opposition Leader. John Cain Jr, the predecessor to Kirner, and Labor had driven Victoria into the ground and Victorians were fleeing in great numbers to places like Queensland. Back then the Herald Sun ran a page one that was just black, signifying how bad things had got in the state. Basically, a funeral notice. Kennett was like a dog attacking a bone and he was a daily presence in media whether it was on AW with Mitchell, arguing with the ABC or shovelling dirt at journalists when he finally became premier. Hardly a night passed without Kennett appearing on the nightly news. Kennett was a showman admired and despised in equal parts. Compare that brand of retail politics from a career advertising man with the bland versions of Opposition Leaders Victoria has had to endure through the tortured decade of Labor leaders Daniel Andrews and now Jacinta Allan. Think about this — the Victorian Liberals have been through Matthew Guy twice, Michael O'Brien, John Pesutto and now Brad Battin. Talk about navel gazing and self-destruction. Surely it can't be that hard to find a suitably aggressive, media friendly alternative to two of the most despised political leaders we have ever experienced. It hasn't happened and as steady a hand as he has been, Brad Battin is just not cutting through. Let me prosecute the case that it's not entirely Battin's fault. I'm currently presenting the Peta Credlin Sky News TV program five days a week for five weeks. This week we contacted the Opposition Leader's office to request a live on-air chat about a loosening of the laws around self-protection if someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night armed with a machete. The response from his media team was to suggest we talk instead with David Limbrick of the Libertarian Party. Offered a prime-time spot to prosecute the case that Premier Allan was ruling over a state of lawlessness so bad that people were arguing we should be able to arm ourselves with baseball bats and fight back, instead we were pushed towards an Independent, not even a Liberal. This was not an isolated case, indeed last week we asked the same office to interview Battin about Jacinta Allan's vote grabbing delusion that she would legislate to make it law you can work from home two days a week. Same response. Sorry, Brad's not available. I was prompted to check when the last time Victoria's Opposition Leader had appeared on Sky's top rating four day a week Credlin show and found, according to our records, it was five weeks ago. I present the Friday version of Credlin and can't remember the last time he appeared with me either. Now Battin and his team can choose to appear in the media and with whomever they choose. But to suggest he has a high profile as Opposition Leader is ludicrous. Most Victorians would struggle to even name him. It's a problem the conservative side of politics, both state and federal, struggle with. The NSW Liberal Opposition leader is a bloke called Mark Speakman who as late as this week was facing a leadership challenge over a net-zero bungle. In South Australia a bloke even I have never heard of leads the Liberals – Vincent Tarzia. Vincent took over after former leader David Speirs was forced to resign after pleading guilty to two drug charges and a video showed him snorting a substance from a plate. The best known Liberal Opposition leader in Australia would be WA's Basil Zempilas, who has been in the job five months. Basil, of course, is best known for his football commentary on the Seven Network not for his politics and he leads a team of just seven members of the lower house. Then of course we have the newly minted Federal Liberal leader Sussan Ley who when a poll was taken to identify who she was by showing members of the public a photograph of her, not one person knew who she was. One thought she was Gina Rinehart another a bank executive and to be fair not everyone knew who even Anthony Albanese was. Liberals around the country are searching for leaders that can connect with wider Australia. Ley deserves her shot at the top job and given the Coalition will be in Opposition for the next four years she has plenty of time to get known. Brad Battin doesn't have the luxury of time with a state election just 14 months away and Victorians deserve better than an alternative Premier being hidden away. Unlike most state and federal politicians, he has a work history as an ex-police officer and prison guard – ideal for prosecuting the case in a lawless state overrun by violent crime. Someone needs to tell him to accept every media opportunity offered to him. He should take a leaf out of Kennett's playbook where he insisted on live in-person interviews so he couldn't be edited. Victoria had and still has a love-hate relationship with our most successful recent Liberal Premier, but one thing is for sure you couldn't ignore him. So, media savvy was he that after being confronted by a barbecue wielding union protester out the front of the old AW studios in Bank St he made one more big demand. He asked us to install a landline into his office to conduct live interviews from there. We did it only to regret the decision as Jeff kept dialling in to go on air like some sort of media commentator. At least Victorians knew who he was. Dislikes • Convicted drug and gun criminal Snoop Dogg as the Grand Final entertainment – how does that fit the AFL's family image. • Anthony Albanese promising to recognise a Palestinian State. • Cowardly masked neo-Nazis marching through Melbourne in the dead of night. • ACTU pushing for a four-day week at Canberra's economic roundtable next week. Likes • Reserve Bank cut interest rates for the third time this year. • EV drivers look like being slugged a road user tax – about time. • Ageless Magpie Scott Pendlebury at age 37 going around next year. • Donald Trump doing what our leaders should do cleaning up Washington DC of homeless criminals and drug dealers. Steve Price Saturday Herald Sun columnist Melbourne media personality Steve Price writes a weekly column in the Saturday Herald Sun.
Perth Now
4 hours ago
- Perth Now
Hidden issue fueling Aussie crisis
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NED-14018-How-Australias-birth-rate-has-fallen However, as Australia struggles to boost the economy, and in turn raise wages and living standards, it's also contending with a sluggish birth rate of 1.5 births per woman, which is under the 2.1 figure needed to sustain population growth. Boosting productivity was also essential to ensuring that Australia's ageing population could weather economic headwinds, the Treasurer said. 'Now, the reason why the productivity challenge is important to this is because our society is ageing, and over time, there will be fewer workers for every person who's retired,' he said. 'We need to make sure that our economy is as productive as it can be, as strong as it can be to withstand that demographic change, which is going to be big and consequential.' Treasurer Jim Chalmers said boosting productivity was essential to help Australia weather an ageing population. NewsWire/ Martin Ollman Credit: News Corp Australia Mr Chalmers also spurned calls from former Liberal prime minister John Howard to resurrect the $3000 baby bonus cash incentive bought in by his treasurer Peter Costello in 2004. The Queenslander's parliamentary colleagues have advocated for other measures to spur a baby boom, including Nationals senator Matt Canavan's proposed $100,000 loans for first-time parents to buy their first home. Parliament's maverick father of the house Bob Katter also proposed incoming splitting for parents so they paid less overall tax. For example, a household where two parents earn a combined income of $150,000 pays about $10,000 less tax than a household with a single worker pulling in $150,000. Instead, Mr Chalmers said Labor's supports were 'more enduring,' pointing to policies like guaranteeing three days of subsidised child care for families earning less than $533,280, increasing paid parental leave to 25 weeks, and paying super on government-funded parental leave to tackle the gender superannuation gap. The decline in birth rate. Source: Supplied Credit: Supplied 'That policy from a couple of decades ago was a one-off payment, and we found ways to support parents which is meaningful and enduring, not one off. That's the main difference,' he said. 'Our political opponents … haven't said how they would fund that, how they would pay for that, whereas we've been carefully budgeting all this help for parents in our budgets and providing that in an ongoing way. 'We're always in the market for ideas about ways to support families. We've got all this cost-of-living help rolling out, (like) all the childcare changes. All of that, I think, demonstrate a willingness on our part to support families (in making) decisions about whether they want to have kids or have more kids.' Mr Chalmers says the 'generational anxiety' plaguing Australia youth simultaneously contending with rising house prices and inflation will also be a touchstone ahead of the economic reform roundtable, which at one point was called the productivity roundtable before it was quietly changed. He concedes productivity can 'sound like a cold lifeless piece of economic jargon' but explains the metric is 'about efficiency' and 'about how we make our economy stronger to deliver for more people so that they can earn more and get ahead and be better off'. Australia's birthrate has fallen below the 2.1 births needed to sustain Australia's population. Jason Edwards/ NewsWire Credit: News Corp Australia Generational equality has also fuelled some of the roundtable's more controversial submissions, including the Australian Council of Trade Unions' call to limit negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions on just one property by the next five years, and teal Wentworth MP Allegra Spender's overhaul of the tax system that she says is overly reliant on income taxes. The ACTU has also reiterated calls for a four-day work week, while the Productivity Commission irked business bodies with calls for a new 5 per cent cash flow tax and a road user charge to ensure EV drivers, who skip the fuel excise, also contribute to road upgrades. How to best handle the opportunities posed by artificial intelligence, while mitigating the risks and job losses, will also be debated on day two; however, Mr Chalmers is quietly optimistic. 'I think one of the big challenges, broadly, but especially for young people, is how they adapt and adopt technology, so a big focus will be how do we skill people up to use artificial intelligence so that it's it works for them, not against them, particularly in the workplace,' he said. Mr Chalmers will use talks to create consensus on what he says is the 'most transformative influence on our economy and our lifetime', and while he doesn't want to pre-empt decisions, education settings and regulation will likely be immediate action points once talks end on Thursday. '(AI) has to change the way we think about skills and capabilities, and I'll work closely with colleagues in the education portfolios, the industry portfolio and elsewhere to make sure that we've got the settings right,' he said. 'Whether it's regulation, whether it's education, in a whole bunch of areas, governments have to catch up and keep up with the accelerating pace of technological change.'
Sydney Morning Herald
7 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The one thing America could learn from us
A few weeks ago I watched as protesters braved the rain to cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge in a March for Humanity, calling for aid to Gaza. Among the Palestinian flags, one image stood out: the Indigenous flag, symbolising a shared history of dispossession. This week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that Australia will next month recognise a Palestinian state at the UN. These developments remind us that identity cannot be separated from politics. At a time when democracies elsewhere are fracturing under the weight of polarisation, Australia's institutional resilience should embolden us to embrace our differences more openly in political discourse – not frighten us. As an Australian studying in the US during both of Trump's presidential victories I saw first hand how identities can be politicised to fracture a society. After the October 7 Hamas attacks I witnessed, as a graduate student, how Harvard students retreated into ideological silos, avoiding dialogue with those whose identities they perceived to be at odds with their own. Australia feels different – partly because of how our political system is structured. Identity weighs less heavily on our social conscience, but perhaps that's why it's so often ignored. Identity politics refers to the idea that our race, gender, religion or class shapes our political views. Over time it has often been framed as divisive. Peter Dutton, after the 2023 Voice referendum defeat, said the result was a rejection of 'the madness of identity politics'. But his own loss in the 2025 election might suggest otherwise. A wave of post-election commentary emphasised the Liberal Party's need to better reflect 'modern Australia', with female representation highlighted as one of the most glaring absences in the party room. Loading Australia's electoral system structurally limits the worst elements of polarisation caused by identity politics. Unlike the US, where turnout hovers around 60 per cent, Australia's compulsory voting system ensures broad participation and fosters a more centrist politics. Our Westminster system means Australian voters elect a party to govern, not a singular leader. Our ballots are cast for local MPs, and the party with the majority elects our prime minister. In contrast, the US system centres on the direct election of a president, making national politics more personalised by design. Preferential voting also encourages engagement with more than one party and rewards coalition-building over extremism. This institutional design helps insulate us from the deep political tribalism seen in the US and gives us the space to explore identity in a less adversarial way. A few months ago, during the 2025 Australian federal election, the main topics on the campaign trail were the cost of living, Medicare, affordable housing and Australia's future energy mix – a far cry from the US presidential election, which focused on a 'war on woke' and employed rhetoric that divided American voters along lines of race, gender and sexuality. This contrast is driven in part by the need of American candidates to use emotionally charged narratives to boost voter turnout.
